Tissue or organ repair has been the ultimate goal of surgery from ancient times to the present day. Biomaterials, as the structural components of medical devices, are used extensively in the treatment of disease, trauma and disability. The most significant advances have been made through the development of so-called bioactive materials. These bioactive materials interact with the host tissues to assist and improve the healing process. CaCO3 has been used for bone repair in the form of ceramic blocks, granules or CaCO3 cement, it is a weak bioceramic alone without dextrin, gelatin, dextran and thus cannot be used on its own as major load-bearing implants in the human body. Dextrin was used because it is very firm, rigid and it is more tacky and faster setting. The process to produce the scaffolds is simple without using any sophisticated equipment and the scaffolds can be ready within 4-5 days. Easily sterilized either by exposure to high temperatures or gamma radiation and remain unaffected by one of these techniques. This scaffolds fall into the III category of medical devices, which are medical devices meant for permanent use which are not directly in contact with the blood stream nor the central nervous system, but do exert a biological effect or are absorbed totally or partially.
One of the most widely studied hard tissue engineering approaches seeks to regenerate the lost or damaged tissue by making use of the interactions between cells and biodegradable scaffolds. This strategy usually involves the seeding and in vitro culturing of cells within a 3-D polymeric matrix—a scaffold—prior to implantation. The bioresorbable scaffold must be biocompatible and porous interconnected network to facilitate rapid vascularization and growth of newly formed tissue.
Various source of Calcium Carbonate were used previously, some of the sources are limestone, coral which are found in a balance ecosystem. Natural coral exoskeleton derived from marine reefs is composed of calcium carbonate. It was introduced as a substitute for bone-graft in the mid-1970s, and has been used clinically to treat a variety of orthopedic and craniofacial defects of bone. This type of coral besides their endangered species is very nature expensive, and sometimes very expensive to collect. Limestone is a rock collects from the deep-seabed different from the coral as a biominerals. These materials are well known for their excellent bone-bonding capabilities but they are brittle and have poor resistance to compressive stress. In order to minimize the dependency of the above sources, the cockle shell which is easily available is used. The present invention of porous bioceramic composition has excellent bone bonding capabilities, tough and good resistance to compressive stress.
Calcium carbonate-based ceramic in combination with dextrin were used as a novel technology in this study. Gelatin and dextran are another two materials in this component to support the scaffolds.
The porous 3-D scaffolds prepared contain mainly cockle shells (CaCO3) and dextrin, and process through the heating and freeze-drying methods.